Grumley’s riveting sequel to Deep Freeze successfully steers the series into full-tilt sci-fi madness. After dying in a freak bus accident, U.S. Army veteran John Reiff was revived as part of a covert research program that altered his DNA. Twenty-three years later, Reiff has been frozen again and stored in a cabin in Utah. His body is removed from storage by a group of his apparent allies, who also make off with the machine that brought Reiff to life. They’ve retrieved Reiff because he’s become a subject of interest for a shadowy group of power brokers called “The Nine,” whose members want to know if Reiff’s freezing had any adverse effects. If not, they plan to freeze themselves to survive a mysterious event. Once Reiff’s rescuers bring him back to life, they learn he may be connected to a bizarre discovery involving space travel, which carries massive implications for the future of the planet. Grumley tosses a lot of balls in the air, but he juggles them all nimbly, keeping the plot’s many surprises well concealed without sacrificing pace. Blake Crouch fans will love this. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

Romance author Connolly (the Agents of the Convent series) combines a genteel love story with a middle-of-the-road murder plot in this sturdy if unremarkable series launch. Bored with teaching history to disinterested teenagers, Claire Walker decides to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a baker and applies to the 12th season of Britain’s Battle of the Bakers. She’s swiftly accepted and summoned to historic Blackfirth Park—home of the wealthy and charming viscount Jonathan Ainsley—where the show is set to tape. Claire is immediately smitten with Ainsley, who, in turn, is charmed by her knowledge of history. The pair’s mutual infatuation gets put on pause when one of the show’s contestants is murdered in a manner that echoes the killing of one of Ainsley’s ancestors. Producers call in the police, who tap the trustworthy Claire to gather intel on her fellow bakers. She ropes Ainsley into her investigation, putting their budding romance to the test as they try to keep more bodies from piling up. Connolly’s leads have sufficient chemistry, and she dutifully hits cozy mystery beats, but an abrupt ending and workmanlike plotting prevent this from breaking out of the pack. It’s a literary soufflé: tasty, airy, and insubstantial. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

Unger (The New Couple in 5B) centers this overstuffed action thriller around a dangerous game of hide and seek. Former extreme sports star Maverick Dillan runs a wildly popular production company that specializes in high-profile, high-stakes adventures for thrill seekers. His latest contest—a game of hide and seek with a million-dollar prize—is set to take place on the beautiful Falcão Island, part of a remote archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Adele, a newly single mother, has entered the competition with the encouragement of her two teenage children. Shortly after she arrives on Falcão, a storm rocks the island, and dire warnings from a local mystic strike an ominous tone. Then rumors swirl that a missing contestant has been murdered. Unger overcomplicates her closed-circle setup, introducing podcast transcripts, convoluted backstories for her characters, and a dizzying number of narrators. While some twists satisfy and the pace remains brisk throughout, this doesn’t live up to its potential. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

Aukes (the Redline Corps series) successfully tweaks the Jurassic Park formula in this intricate sci-fi thriller about a plot to revive extinct species. Sam Brodie, a federal wildlife officer, is called to Yellowstone National Park to investigate reports of an unusually large cat roaming the area. Brodie and a colleague find and kill the animal; afterward, Brodie notices that its massive teeth resemble those of the extinct saber-toothed tiger. She reports her findings to her superiors, and the case gets shunted to the Wilderness and Animal Special Protection team, or WASP, a task force that “works the weird stuff” in America’s wilderness. As more evidence of living prehistoric carnivores surfaces across the region, Brodie gets reassigned to WASP to help unravel the mystery. Flashbacks reveal that the creatures are part of a business initiative by billionaire Marc Angel, who hopes to charge people for the opportunity to hunt the beasts or watch them battle each other. Soon Angel and his corporation are clashing with Brodie and her colleagues, with deadly results. Aukes takes the time to fully develop his characters while still providing enough action to keep the pages flying. A sequel would be welcome. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 12/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

An amnesiac grows suspicious of her new fiancé’s family in this taut psychological thriller from Marshall (No One Can Know). Within months of meeting handsome scion Connor Dalton at a party, Theodora “Theo” Scott—who has significant gaps in her memory of the early years of her life—eagerly accepts his marriage proposal. As the novel opens, Theo is preparing to accompany Connor to his family’s vast, isolated winter estate, even as she fears that his relatives suspect her of gold-digging. Those anxieties spike when Theo receives a series of anonymous text messages just before they arrive, the eeriest of them asserting that the sender knows who Theo is and “what [she] did,” and will expose her secrets if she doesn’t keep away from Connor. Once Theo settles in at the Daltons’ estate, she attempts to suss out who’s been threatening her, while also contending with an eerie feeling that she’s been on the property before. Flashbacks gradually fill in the blurry details of Theo’s past, keeping readers on edge. Fans of Riley Sager will enjoy this. Agent: Lauren Spieller, Folio Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

Faber’s crackling debut centers on a philosophy professor who gets entangled in the case of a missing student. When Neil Weber was six years old, he watched a woman drown without trying to help save her. The trauma of that episode informed his decision to study human behavior; it also compels him to intervene when his campus is roiled by the disappearance of student Lucia Vanotti. Weber has a fuzzy memory of offering Vanotti a cigarette once, and, despite having no authorized role in the investigation, he reaches out to her family and friends for details about her disappearance. His actions arouse suspicion from the police, which Weber ignores, until his inquiry leads him to fear that one of his best friends might be involved. Faber alternates between Weber’s present-day narration and Vanotti’s perspective, including flashbacks to her childhood and a chronicle of the year before she vanished, keeping even careful readers off-balance throughout. Nuanced characterizations and the author’s gift for evoking the rhythms of campus life are sure to delight fans of Peter Swanson. Readers will be eager to see what Faber does next. Agent: Savannah Brooks, KT Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Meyer’s excellent eighth novel featuring Benny Griessel (after The Dark Flood) finds the South African police detective longing to return to the high-stakes missions he and his partner, Vaughn Cupido, embarked on before they were exiled from Cape Town for exposing corruption within South Africa’s top intelligence agency. Griessel’s dreams take a hit when his former commander, Mbali Kaleni, who’d promised to reinstate him and Cupido after the uproar quieted down, resigns without explanation. Before the detective can find out what happened, he and Cupido are assigned to investigate the death of a female mountain biker in the usually sleepy village of Stellenbosch. The victim was found with a broken neck and animal bite marks on her legs. Meanwhile, wildlife guide Christina Jaeger’s former partners in crime enlist her in a daring million-dollar theft, which doesn’t go as planned. Meyer expertly interlaces his main narrative threads in shrewd and unpredictable ways, remaining one step ahead of readers as he ushers the plot to a rollicking conclusion. This intelligent page-turner confirms Meyer’s reputation as a master of the police procedural. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lawson’s darkly satisfying latest (after Kingpin) finds political fixer Joe DeMarco investigating a salacious cover-up by a senior government official in Washington, D.C. Two months after Brandon Cartwright, a billionaire heir known for his raucous sex parties, is killed, National Archives director Porter Hendricks comes across a draft copy of a recent speech the president gave at the United Nations. On the back is a doodle that strongly suggests the president was planning to have Cartwright murdered by his friend, national security adviser Eric Doyle. Hendricks takes the document to former Speaker of the House John Mahoney, who asks DeMarco to look into the matter. Soon after he begins, people connected to the inquiry start turning up dead, prompting him to turn to his friend Emma, a former Defense Intelligence Agency spy, for help. Lawson loads the action with everything fans expect from the series—banter between DeMarco and Emma, new information about DeMarco’s hit man father, perfidy at the highest levels of government—and then pushes the plot into uncharted, pitch-black territory, adding a welcome jolt of gravity to DeMarco’s adventures. This long-running series still has plenty of gas in the tank. Agent: Mel Berger, WME. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Debut author Burnett squanders a strong premise in this tense but ultimately disappointing thriller. At the outset, British glaciologist Rachael Beckett has been alone in Antarctica for nearly two months. She left her husband and young daughter in the U.K. to embark on a research trip organized by her colleague, Guy Barnard, who hoped to survey the thickness of Antarctica’s ice shelves as a chunk the size of Wales prepares to break off. Initially, Rachael believed the group’s biggest obstacle would be corporate interference, since the research was to be used to help bring an end to commercial drilling on the continent. Soon after arriving, though, she was separated from the rest of her team and trapped in a remote hut. Ever since, she’s been alone, listening to radio reports that nuclear weapons have hit London. Unable to reach her colleagues or family, Rachael fears she may be among the last people alive on Earth. Nevertheless, she attempts to complete her research, often hallucinating conversations with her loved ones in the process. The opening chapters drop readers into a gripping, claustrophobic scenario, but it’s not long before cliché creeps in, with the late-breaking explanation for Rachael’s plight deflating the initial intrigue with a whimper. Though Burnett shows promise, this fails to stick the landing. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Kerr puts his background as a lawyer and tech executive to good use in his impressively unpredictable debut. Mackenzie Clyde, an attorney from humble beginnings, now works as an investigator for Hammersmith, one of San Francisco’s hottest venture capital firms. When Trevor Canon, head of tech startup Journy, is discovered dead in his office and the SFPD fail to make headway on the case, the founder of Hammersmith—whose firm made a $5 billion investment in Journy—uses his influence to bring in the FBI. Mackenzie joins FBI agent Jameson Danner, the son of a U.S. senator, in leading the investigation, and the pair soon discovers that, before Trevor’s death, he inserted a clause into his will freezing his assets (including Hammersmith’s investment) until his murderer is caught. It gradually becomes clear that only a Journy executive would have had the access necessary to kill Trevor, but each one has an airtight alibi—except for the chief technology officer, who’s just disappeared. After setting the stage for a standard, albeit glitzy, murder mystery, Kerr takes the narrative on a series of hairpin turns before arriving at a jaw-dropping finale. This marks the arrival of a formidable new talent. Agent: Liz Parker, Verve Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink